Creating OA Information for Researchers

1. Background About half of the Swedish Universities and University colleges are today administrating some sort of institutional repository and about a dozen of these can deliver meta data according to the recommendations set by a national project SVEP in 2003-05. Today the problem is not a lack of software or hardware technology. The immediate question is instead how we are going to fill our archives with full-text documents and how to make researchers see the possibilities and the advantages with publishing their documents Open Access. Today there is a vast ignorance of OA in the Swedish research community. Many Swedish libraries need therefore a support in order to tackle the task of sharing information and marketing OA. The understanding and knowledge about OA among librarians is also needed to be increased. An easily accessed OA information kit aimed at researchers and administered by librarians and other information specialists would contribute to a higher OA competence among teaching staff, it would increase researcher knowledge about OA and at the same time increase the amount of records in Swedish OA repositories. This poster will describe how during 2007 a project group consisting of representatives from 6 Swedish universities and university colleges produced a set of presentation-and information material aimed for researchers and administered by librarians and other information specialists. Making this cooperative material freely available there is no longer need to repetitively produce the same material in different locations. Instead energy can be relocated to offensive marketing work contributing to a higher OA competence among teaching staff, and increase researcher knowledge about OA and hopefully increase the amount of records in Swedish OA repositories. During the project a number of education-and information objects in English (by May 2008) and Swedish were created. These consisted of longer texts (4-5000 words), PowerPoint presentations, leaflets, lists of links and contact information. A website was created for exposing and downloading the information. This was done using the Search Guide network framework where independent libraries are using the same open source platform for sharing information and material. All the material produced in the project is freely accessible and published under Creative Commons licence